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Mortal Kombat Gold follows Mortal Kombat Trilogy and precedes Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. It is an updated version of Mortal Kombat 4 and is identical in many ways. It was the first Mortal Kombat game to appear on a sixth-generation platform. It appeared exclusively on the Sega Dreamcast as a launch title and not on the arcade or any other game system. All the fighters were the same from Mortal Kombat 4, with a few additional characters returning.

This game also includes new levels not seen in Mortal Kombat 4 and a new weapon select mechanism, but it remains largely unchanged from its predecessor. In some ways, due to loading times (even during battles, particularly in the case of Shinnok's impersonations) and glitch-laden effects, its quality wasactually poor. As for gameplay, aside from more characters, Mortal Kombat Gold plays identically to Mortal Kombat 4.

Secret Characters

Secret, hidden characters were accessible by using a code on the player select screen. The hidden characters were Sektor, Noob Saibot, and Goro. In addition, a cheat code allowed a bloody skeleton to replace any character, adopting his or her moves and fatalities. This skeleton, used otherwise as a template in various fatalities in the game, is known as Meat, although the character was not named in the game.

Belokk was also a character to have been rumored to be in the game and accessible by a cheat code. The developer of the game, Eurocom, accidentally sent information about the game with Belokk in it to Game Informer, and as a result, six screenshots of him were leaked to the public. When rotating Tanya's character box for an alternate costume, it reveals a question mark. It was rumored that the question mark was to represent Belokk had he really been in the game. It was questioned why Tanya's box did that, but it was just added to the list of glitches and mistakes in Mortal Kombat Gold.

Boss and sub-boss

Shinnok is the boss character and playable character in both Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat Gold.

Goro is the sub-boss appearing before Shinnok. He is only playable through a cheat code.

Quan Chi is another sub-boss and playable character in both Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat Gold, he serves as the sub sub-boss on the the master ladder, appering before Goro for the Home version and serves as a sub-boss on master ladder 2 for the arcade version.

Trivia

Mortal Kombat Gold received two seperate printings. The first version of the game has a gold tinted disc, and has many game-breaking bugs and glitches, texture issues, crashing and many other issues. Such errors include texture loading errors upon start up, often loading up mix-matched textures, character and arena alike. The results of such glitches are often randomized. The game's music often changes during gameplay without warning, and does not change to the proper Fatality music when Fatalities were performed. The second printing of the game fixed most (if not all) of the bugs, and had a red-tinted disc as well as a case with a green sticker with "Hot! New!" stuck to it.

Although Mortal Kombat Gold brought back several new characters, they were largely made up of moves, poses and Fatalities from existing characters. While Mileena received a completely new design, Baraka's redesign was based off of Reptile's MK4 design, while Cyrax, Sektor and Kung Lao reused their designs straight from MK3. Although Kitana returns in her UMK3 outfit, she lacks her mask. The weapons used by these new characters are also re-skinned versions of existing weapons from Mortal Kombat 4. Most conspicuously, Sektor's "Compactor" Fatality re-uses the sprites featured in the same Fatality from previous games, poorly mixing two-dimensional sprites with three-dimensional models.

Although Kitana already had a pre-existing model in Mortal Kombat 4 featured in Liu Kang's ending (a gameplay model featured in the arcade and N64 versions, and a cinematic model in other versions), her UMK3 design was remade in playable form for Mortal Kombat Gold, including a new voice actress. Liu Kang's ending was not altered to accommodate for this however, causing the game to show two drastically different designs and voices for Kitana within the same setting.

During its release, Mortal Kombat Gold gained recognition as one of the worst launch titles of the Sega Dreamcast's library.

Rarely, during demo mode, the initials of the player with the most wins will be shown and announced as "MK5." However, once the screen with the top 15 most wins appears, the top player's initials will return to normal. This is also the case with MK4. Whether this is an easter egg or a glitch is unknown.